From beauty pageant to politics

The Chinese community is of late engrossed with the developments on the sex bloggers and eating at school changing room while in the Malay society, it's the beauty pageant involving four Muslim women.

These four young ladies were all hailing from Eurasian families, partly Malay and partly western lineages. Perhaps because of that these four ladies are relatively more open-minded than their peers.

They took part in Miss World Malaysia pageant, and all of them made it to the final 20.

The question is, Malaysia has had a fatwa banning Muslim women from taking part in beauty contests as early as the 1990s.

In Malaysia, a fatwa is a kind of decision or verdict by a mufti enjoying official status on whether certain behaviours are in compliance with the Islamic teachings, and the same verdict is legally binding.

These four young ladies' behaviour was seen as contravening the religious fatwa, and they could face jail sentence once convicted in a syariah court.

They immediately came under harsh criticisms by the religious clerics, and from the reports and analyses in the Malay media, it could be deduced that they are generally censured by the Malay society which feels they have acted against the religious teachings and not in conformity to the Malay customs.

They were subsequently disqualified by the organisers after the incident fell into national limelight. Actions were mulled against them by the religious department.

Only a feeble voice would go against the overwhelming tide to voice up for the ladies.

The more liberal Sisters in Islam claimed that fatwa should be a kind of religious view or proposal that should not be made into a law against the public.

The Sisters in Islam instantly found themselves under merciless assault, and the religious department threatened sanctions against the organisation.

The incident has somewhat come to a close with the ladies now out of the race and having apologised.

As a matter of fact, this incident has allowed the non-Muslim society, in particular the Chinese community to gain a glimpse into the mainstream value system of Muslims in Malaysia.

Beauty pageants couldn't have been more commonplace to most Chinese Malaysians, but in the Muslim society, they are a taboo.

Although the Miss World Malaysia was done without the glaring bikinis, only sarung covering the body in its stead, and the facts that the Miss World grand final will be held in Indonesia with more than ten times as many Muslims as here and other countries with predominantly Muslim populations such as Turkey are active participants in the pageant, the Islamic inclination in Malaysia could be more conservative than in many other Muslim countries.

I asked a few Islamic scholars whether the campaigns against political Islamisation in Egypt and Turkey could happen in Malaysia, and was given the flat negative answer for the simple reason that Malaysian Muslims are more devout to their religion and they will only demand more Islamisation.

The marriage between nationalism and religious fundamentalism have moulded a unique identity in this country, and such an identify has expanded the political and social forces of the Malay society.

The same forms the mainstream ideology of the Malay society that penetrates into every aspect from beauty pageants to politics. Understanding this, we should get a deeper insight into the Malay society.

- Sin Chew Daily